Firefly and PC GAMESS-related discussion club

 
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Thomas Pijper
thomaspijper@hotmail.com

What you're basically asking is "will Firefly run well on an ARM processor optimized for use in a handheld device". Let's start with that ARM is currently becoming popular in servers, but that is mainly because of energy efficiency concerns, not raw power. Recent x86 processors are still much more powerful. Now, one may argue that if a certain x86 processor is, say, 3 times after than a certain ARM processor, the same performance can be obtained by just using 3 times more ARM processors. However, that is only true for tasks that can be split well between multiple CPU cores. QC software doesn't scale as perfectly as some other tasks (such as raytracing) - performance gains will thus diminish when more and more cores are added. See the Performance section for examples.

As for processors in handheld devices: these are foremost optimized for power efficiency. I would not see why anyone would want to run QC calculations on them.

As for the PS3: many speak highly of its processor power, but that's IMO not deserved. The Cell processor in the PS3 a single core processor with seven coprocessors. This makes for great performance in certain tasks (such as protein folding), but mediocre in other. I would definitely not call it a supercomputer.


Kind regards,
Thom


On Thu Feb 26 '15 6:51am, Siddheshwar Chopra wrote
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>Dear Jim Kress,
>I completely agree with you on this. It would be really painful to keep updating Firefly. But still, out of curiosity, if we DONOT update the OS at all; then Jim can you tell me if a android Firefly would be running well or not? Will it be beneficial or not?
>My basic query is that IS the current smartphone hardware good for computing? You must have even heard of the latest Playstation 3 supercomputer too.

>Kind Regards,

>On Wed Feb 25 '15 3:23am, Jim Kress wrote
>-----------------------------------------
>>One can only imagine the severity of headaches and loss of health trying to:

>>1) Convert Firefly code to the Android OS
>>2) Maintain the code when the monthly changes to the Android OS occur
>>3) Support the code across multiple Android OS's, handsets, tablets, etc.

>>I, for one, would NEVER do this.

>>Jim

>>On Sat Dec 6 '14 6:56am, Siddheshwar Chopra wrote
>>-------------------------------------------------
>>>Dear Users,
>>>Please pardon me for this question. I have been since long thinking about FIREFLY app. The reason being the smartphones prices going cheaper and cheaper. I mean the octa core 2GHz with 2GB RAM is coming very cheap in the market. I need to know how you all feel about this.
>>>Alex Sir I need your views too on this. Will a FIREFLY App be successful in smarthphones? Will it be equally efficient? App will definitely boost the popularity and usability of FIREFLY...

>>>Kind Regards,

[ This message was edited on Thu Feb 26 '15 at 11:46pm by the author ]